And Now For Something Completely Different

And Now For Something Completely Different

By: Andrew Hines

The great thing about DCU Presents is that you can just pick out the few with a storyline and characters that grab your attention. It’s perfect for the picky completist in all of us comic geeks. This one in particular gives us two cool bench warmer heroes in one great starter issue. Blue Devil and Black Lightning have been relative unknowns for a while, with the exception of the latter’s appearance in Final Crisis. I really can’t recall much about Blue Devil, save for the fact that I always loved the idea of him. He was mentioned a bit in Infinite Crisis, but hasn’t had a starring role in quite a while. Anyway, this might be the time to learn more about him.

Marc Andreyko’s writing here is very good. The pacing is great as are the character introductions, both in and out of “costume”. The setting of Los Angeles is really cool and not something we’ve seen yet in the New 52. Then there’s the inclusion of what looks like both Spanish and Portuguese. That alone is more than other writers have done in a long time. The interaction between Daniel Cassidy (Blue Devil) and Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning) is about what you’d expect when a new superhero meets someone dressed like the devil. It ain’t pretty. Again, gotta say that the pacing is pretty good for a four-part story arc such as this.

The art team is awesome as well. The pencils from Robson Rocha are pretty damn good. The interior page on the right should be all the proof you need. Every other interior page follows this level of awesomeness. As you can see, Oclair Albert’s inks work very well with Rocha’s art. There’s almost exactly the amount of shading you’d expect from late night in L.A. Gabe Eltaeb’s colors sort of pull everything together. Even better than this creative team, I think, are the costume designs themselves and the effects that the team has given us. Danny’s suit in particular is just a huge step up from the old days. The same can be said for most of Jefferson’s costume, with the exception of the Booster Gold-style headgear/glasses.

This ends up just being a great issue and a wonderful start to what could be the best DC Universe Presents storyline so far. This get’s a straight “A”.

About mcknight57

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